Beginner Guide to Making Ramen Noodles from Scratch

today on the way of ramen we're doing a beginner ramen noodle from scratch if you've always wanted to make your own noodles but didn't know how this video is for you i'm going to walk you through all of the basics and then i'm going to show you where you can go from there so let's get right into it [Music] [Music] so like i said this isn't the fanciest noodle recipe out there i simplified it down to the most basic ingredients to help you build a foundation to make your own noodles i'm still learning myself but these are the techniques that i use when i'm making noodles currently as of july 2020 so for the ingredients you're going to need bread flour cold water some kind of alkaline agent either potassium carbonate or sodium carbonate we're gonna make sodium carbonate in this video and kosher salt you'll also need some kind of dusting flour like potato starch or corn starch so first let's take a look at kansui the thing that makes ramen noodles ramen noodles we're going to be using this today this is sodium carbonate and we're going to be making it by baking baking soda there's a lot of different types of alkaline agents you can use to make kansui but sodium carbonate is the cheapest and easiest to make so we're going to use it no matter what your kansui is made of what makes ramen noodles unique is the way these alkaline components interact with the gluten and flour sodium and carbonate when used in kansui makes a chewier stretchier noodle this characteristic makes it great for beginners because the dough will be easier to knead especially with a high hydration noodle like we're doing today this is also why for low hydration noodles sodium carbonate is usually recommended as it won't fall apart as easily as potassium carbonate speaking of potassium carbonate this is another great option for ramen noodles if you choose this you'll get a firmer snappier noodle compared to sodium carbonate so if you like snappier noodles use this stuff just remember you won't be able to use it for low hydration noodles because it will just fall apart what i typically do these days is i blend these two together in a ratio that gives me the characteristics that i want that matches the soup that i'm making so to make sodium carbonate weigh out 100 grams of baking soda in a foil lined baking sheet and then get that into an oven that's preheated to 250 degrees fahrenheit and bake it for one hour after one hour you should have lost one third of the weight of your baking soda and then you can just transfer the sodium carbonate into an airtight container and you can use it whenever you want to make noodles next we're going to weigh out 500 grams of bread flour when making ramen noodles everything has to be weighed so you'll need a kitchen scale we're going to base all the measurements on the weight of the flour so we're going to weigh out five grams of sodium carbonate which is one percent of the weight of flour five grams of kosher salt again one percent of the weight of flour and finally 200 grams of cold water or 40 of the weight of flour this number is called the hydration percentage of the noodle and along with the kansoi choice it's the biggest variable when it comes to what kind of noodle you end up making high hydration noodles like this one won't soak up soup as much as low hydration but they also don't get soggy quite as quickly as low hydration once you have everything weighed out add your sodium carbonate and your salt into the water and then stir it until everything is dissolved this solution is called kansui and this with bread flour is all you need to make a simple ramen noodle so the next step is to slowly and i mean slowly add in the kansui into your bowl of flour you want to just add a little bit and stir it in and then add a little bit more and then stir it in and then repeat that process for about five to six minutes until all the kansui is added what you're trying to do is hydrate as much of the flour with kansui as possible if you pour all the water at once you'll end up with a big clump of dough and a bunch of dry flour doing it this way seems to take longer but you actually save a lot of time kneading and rolling out the dough so don't rush this step take your time so while i'm mixing here i'll talk a little bit more about hydration percentages we're making a 40 noodle which is very high hydration anything over 35 is considered high hydration anything under 30 is considered low hydration high hydration soups don't pick up soup as easily as low hydration noodles but they're much easier to make and they don't get as soggy as quickly with the pasta machine it's pretty difficult actually to make low hydration noodles so i would say don't go any lower than 33 or you'll risk breaking your machine so anyways back to mixing as you finish up adding the kansui you'll start to see small clumps of dough forming the smaller these clumps are the better you don't want to see huge clumps here once all the kansu is added you want to get some gloves on and rub the loose dough between your hands to try to further hydrate any flour that might still be dry if you added the kansoi slowly you shouldn't have to do this step for very long but if you still have a lot of dry flour in your bowl try to pick that up and rub it together with the wetter dough the goal is equal hydration for all the flour in the bowl if you see any big clumps you can break those apart and you can also scrape the bowl with the loose dough to pick up any extra flour that's stuck to it a well hydrated dough should stick together if you squeeze it but crumble back apart fairly easily if you got something that looks like this you're pretty much good to go next transfer all the loose dough into a ziploc bag get as much of the air out as you can and then let the dough rest at room temperature for 30 minutes [Music] [Music] after 30 minutes of resting there might be a little extra air in the bag from degassing you can let that air out then close it back up and then you want to put on some clean socks and step on the dough to knead it into one sheet i like to double bag my ziploc just in case the ziploc tears when i'm stepping on it because i don't want my feet to touch the noodles but you can do whatever you want if your dough is well hydrated it shouldn't take too long to come together into a nice flat sheet rest the dough for another 30 minutes at this point after the second rest dust the work surface with some potato starch and then take your dough out of the bag you want to cut the dough into little strips a little smaller than the width of your pasta machine i'm using a rolling pin here to measure that then you just want to roll out the dough till it's about the same size as the largest setting on your pasta machine some people try to knead dough with the pasta machine and if you have an old-school japanese noodle maker like this one you can do it this thing is cast iron and i'm rolling out a 28 noodle here but if you try to do this with a pasta machine you're just gonna break it so yeah roll it out speaking of pasta machines once your dough can fit inside your pasta machine roll it out to the second widest setting then fold it over in half and then roll it together again by hand this is called laminating the dough and this helps align the gluten in one direction you also want to laminate in the direction you'll be cutting so be sure to do it this way then take your laminated dough set your machine back to the widest setting and then feed in the side of the dough that used to be the two ends first and roll it down to whatever setting you want i usually do anything from five to seven on the atlas here's a chart with all the thicknesses i'm going for six this time which is about 1.2 millimeters i have the thickness that i like i like to cut my dough to size here for my noodles usually i just fold it in half and cut it and this gives me a long noodle that i like but if you like shorter noodles feel free to cut this long sheet into thirds dust your sheets of dough with potato starch again to prevent it from sticking while you're cutting your noodles [Music] once your sheets are dusted you can slowly feed the dough into your noodle cutting attachment you want to do this slowly and try to feed the dough in as straight as possible i like to keep the feeding angle of the dough flat against the machine to prevent it from pinching on itself if your dough starts to bunch near one of the ends you can press it down gently to try to straighten it out i cut my dough sheet a little bit too wide so i'm gonna have some pasta dreadlocks going on on both sides it sucks to waste those so try to cut your sheets a little narrower than the width of your machine when i get close to the end of the sheet i like to gather up the noodles and then hold them while i crank out the last bit of dough and that's how you make ramen noodles repeat the same steps for each sheet of dough and then store them in a plastic container that's dusted with a little bit of potato starch rest the noodles in the fridge for at least one day before using them and after two days you can store the leftovers in the freezer and they'll keep there for a very long time after you get the hang of these techniques you can experiment with other ingredients hydrations and ratios just remember all the percentages will be based off the weight of your dry flour ingredients if you use any eggs the eggs need to be weighed in with the water to calculate your hydration good luck with your noodles and if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and i'll do my best to answer them you can also hit me up on instagram at way of ramen or join our ramen discord server if you need help i'll leave a link for that in the description below and lastly some folks on the discord seem to have found my patreon that i set up pre-koven i never publicized it because honestly i felt kind of wrong when we're pretty much going to be heading into a recession but if you'd like to support the channel i'd be eternally grateful and i'll leave a link to that page as well in the description thank you all so much for watching thank you guys all so much for the support i really do appreciate it and i'll see you all in the next video peace

Channel: Way of Ramen

Views: 1,705,287

Keywords: ramen noodles, ramen, how to make ramen noodles, how to make ramen noodles from scratch, ramen noodle recipe, beginner ramen noodle, ramen noodle guide

Id: _8rsTkOsI2M

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 04 2020